Cigarettes and Orange Juice(The Angel of the Fuckups)​

I can take it you know.

I don’t know why, but I can.

​I always could.

You could paint it all black, write something pithy like “This Machine Kills Monsters” on it in grease paint. You can wrap it in barbed wire. You can cut it to pieces and feed it to your children. You can sing to the glory of the warmth of the blood while flagellating a naked nun before me and like a sad Broadway casting director with a peptic ulcer and a bad divorce pending I’d just yawn and call out NEXT.

“I’m sorry, are you Mr Big? Mr Bad? How do you prefer to be addressed? Big Bad and Ugly? That's great! Nice to meet you Mr B! What will you be performing for us today?”

I don’t know why, but I can.

I’d walk into a room and suck all the darkness out of it.

Parties were always better when I was there.

Date rapes didn’t happen. People didn’t get into fights. The fellas just talked their shit out, had a bro hug and a beer and that was that.

Murders don’t happen in places where I’ve been, you know, until I’ve been gone a good long while. All that dark shit just slides like spoiled black milk down the drain that is me. People would laugh, and cheer, dance and fuck, fall in love, talk of the future, feel hope for years and years after my passing.

My shit ass apartment is probably one of the most safe and sacred spaces on Earth... if only the ceiling weren't peeling and mice pooping everywhere it might actually be worth what I pay for it.

I suck the black out of the scene and then I would go home, drunk and destroyed and craving orgasms the likes of which can be achieved only by sticking my cock in an electrical socket while driving a power drill up my ass. Don't ask. I didn't do the wiring. I just woke up all wired.

I spend too many mornings sitting in a cold, bland sunlight smoking cigarettes and drinking orange juice and trying not to think too much about all these thoughts I've been given or trying to sort them (because I’m like that, curious, I like to know which one of those pretty people I saw last night was capable of THIS. THIS is some fucked up shit.)

I spend too many mornings trying to convince the sun to burn some of the darkness away so I could get to sleep without nightmares.

You know, most mornings.

Some mornings, like this one, are just special.

I am sitting here holding an axe, willing the cigarette I’m chewing on to spontaneously light and trying to hold my guts in with my free hand.

This is not my best day.

I shouldn’t have put my gun down.

I shouldn’t have tried to free the girl before clearing the room.

But fuck you. I’m not a cop. I don’t do this professionally. I saw a girl tied up and I went to untie her. Anyone would have. It is not safe to leave pretty girls tied up in dark rooms with questionable gentlemen.

And I didn’t even know you were in the room okay?

Again, some slack. I'm, well, not new at this but I am certainly not good at this.

We went hands on.

We went toe to toe.

I am not used to hands on.

I am not used to toe to toe.

Hell, I usually come in after the fact with my mind brimming with crime scene reports, the local legends, the drunken whispers and the audio tapes made in the county Nut factory where the survivors usually end up in padded rooms drugged to the gills. I am more about crime scene clean up. I mean, eventually, someone is going to want to live here again and they can't fucking do that if it still has all that sexy-murdery dark about it.

I prefer my blood cold.

I prefer my mirrors broken.

Why look at the room, when I can piece together the puzzle of the room?

I prefer to talk to the empty spaces and coax the stories out of the scurrying mice, the dust, the strange stains on the bed sheets and on the linoleum floors.

I prefer kissing the rusted meat hook, still hanging where they left it then having to deal with black flies and the stench.

And I’m not comfortable with pretty girls tied up around me.

I’m a questionable kind of guy, and this is my fucking life.

This is my life.

I close my eyes.

I hold my breath.

I wait.

But in the end, like all of us, life betrays me.

Air sneaks in.

My eyes open again.

Not my last moment it seems.

This is a pity.

I would have been happy going out on the image of the girl, crawling and pawing and then running that pretty little ass out the door seen through your legs.

I would have been happy going out on a noble act.

But it seems this was not to be.

Either betrayed by life which, try as I might, I just can’t fucking shake off or, and this is much more likely, I’ve not been forgiven yet.

I don’t think I’ve repented enough for that big badass unforgiving donkness in the sky to open the door and let me the hell back in.

A boy can hope but my hope is sadly routed in this world full of orange juice and cigarettes, broken pavement littered with broken needles and used condoms stuck on the ceiling of cheap motels.

I still have my plans you see and, more than anything else I guess, that is what drives him the most nuts.

I am still thinking.

I am still, sadly, full of fucking HOPE for this place and you people and he just got sick of listening to me talk about it at the table.

So I’m not down for good.

You should know that.

You are not lucky enough.

You hit good, clean, hard shots that should have put me down. I mean, I’m sitting here holding my god damned guts in. That quick slash across the belly, the one I thought was a distraction while those fucking disgusting teeth of yours went for my face, turned out to be the mortal blow.

I should be down.

But he hated listening to me talk about you. He hated listening to me bitch about you. He hated that I put so much interest into my fucking pets and less into what we were all supposed to be doing with our time, shining his bottom and puckering up.

So, yea... I, Angel of the Fuckups, am not quiet enough to be down for good.

You gave it took a damn good go, I’ll give you that but I hope you’re finding ammo for my gun or something up there and not wasting your precious last few minutes doing something to the bodies because, honey, we’re going to dance again. I can feel it. I am sure you know it. Once I catch my breath you know I’m going to be getting up and coming after you again.

So I hope you’re setting traps.

I hope you’re loading the gun and making a plan.

And not doing what I keep picturing you doing to the bodies in my head.

I push the axe handle into the floor and use it to push myself up onto my knees. It slips in the spilled blood. I fall face first onto the linoleum. I feel something squeeze out from under me and slide across the floor.

I reach, reach, slowly start pulling it back because... well, I don’t really know how these things work but I imagine if it was in me it must have been important.

Oh yea, I think, get ready fucker.

We’re dancing again.

Just... yea... give me an hour or so.In the meantime I sit there.

Before long it smells of spring time flowers. Before long the sun doesn't slant in so much as beam. Before long there are birds singing outside the window.